A few years back I was asked to design the sound for the horror/thriller “The Book”. It’s about a young man who was driven insane by an ancient book that was possessed by the spirit of a sorceress. This was sort of an odd film since it relied on implied drama, not necessarily drama played out on the screen.

After my first pass of sound design, the director asked if I could score it as well but there was no music budget, but I scored it anyway. I did so because it gave me an opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to try for a while: to merge sound design with music.

Being a musician as well as an engineer, I’ve often thought of sound design as music, but in this case I needed to think of music as sound design. I created a pallet of both musical and sound effects that could be layered, cut & pasted, or shuffled around like one would do with sound but still work as music.

A funny thing happened. When I was done, I realized not only that this is an effective approach; it was also the right approach. If budget was not an issue, this was an approach I should have considered because it “fit”.

Sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6n5Cqo8Npk